Many website owners desire information concerning usage of their websites. For example, an Internet website owner might use a third party service to track the number of users that visit its website, the number of “clicks” these users collectively perform (using their mouse pointers) while visiting the website, and how long these users stay at the website. Using this objective information, the website owner may determine that its website is not attracting a sufficient number of users or has been ineffective at keeping the interest of users once they arrive. The website owner may respond accordingly to improve its websites and, possibly, the success of its associated business operations.
Many website owners sell advertisement space on their websites. One approach to selling advertisement space is for a website owner to contract to display one or more advertisements on its website for a certain period of time. Using this approach, the website owner may change the advertisement based on the time of day, based on the other content of the website, or based upon the activities of one or more users. For example, a search website may change the advertisement presented based upon the nature of a user's search query. Some website owners solicit user reactions to the advertisements presented on their web pages. These user reactions can be reviewed and analyzed to determine the effectiveness of the advertisements and the effect that the advertisements have on user reactions to the website or to particular web pages. Because the website owner controls the content of the advertisement, the website owner can correlate the content of the advertisement with any collected user reaction data. However, using existing techniques, these correlations and analyses are slow and relatively ineffective in assisting website owners, advertisers, and media buyers in making decisions regarding these advertisements.
An alternative approach to selling advertisement space is for a website owner to contract to allow an advertiser or a third party to utilize a portion of a web page to display one or more advertisements for a period of time. However, because the website owner does not control the content of the advertisements, absent user comments that indicate the content of the advertisements, current techniques do not allow website owners to correlate user reactions to the website or to particular web pages with the advertising content.